metrox wrote on 2021-06-04, 23:00:

Recently came upon a "working" CR-562-B, well at least the power light turns on. But can't find any way to connect it to various IDE controllers, I even tried connecting it to a Sound Blaster 16 CT 2830.
Does anyone know anything about this drive?

CR-562-B and CR-563-B are not IDE/ATAPI drives. Do not connect one to an IDE controller! Damage may occur .

Those drives require a Panasonic/MKE proprietary interface . Both IDE and Panasonic/MKE interfaces have 40 pins but are completely incompatible .

EDIT : See https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Matsushita_MKE

EDIT2: Also those drive are slow (2x with 300ms or so access time), cause high CPU usage when accessing DATA (software polling), are prone to mechanical issues (at least one fragile plastic cog inside tends to break) and often aren't that great with recordable media (sample variation between units means you may or may not be lucky on that point). So I would avoid using one unless you want a 1993-1994 lower end experience .

MKE 2X wasn't low end in 1994. It was mid-range. In 1993 ANY CD-ROM drive was considered a luxury.

Why do people keep plugging MKE drives into IDE interfaces? You'd think after 25 years of telling them not to, they'd stop.
I noticed a flood of posts here on VOGONS recently of people asking questions to which answers are readily available if you invest 5 minutes of your time.

darry wrote on 2021-06-04, 23:04:

CR-562-B and CR-563-B are not IDE/ATAPI drives. Do not connect one to an IDE controller! Damage may occur . […]
Show full quote

metrox wrote on 2021-06-04, 23:00:

Recently came upon a "working" CR-562-B, well at least the power light turns on. But can't find any way to connect it to various IDE controllers, I even tried connecting it to a Sound Blaster 16 CT 2830.
Does anyone know anything about this drive?

CR-562-B and CR-563-B are not IDE/ATAPI drives. Do not connect one to an IDE controller! Damage may occur .

Those drives require a Panasonic/MKE proprietary interface . Both IDE and Panasonic/MKE interfaces have 40 pins but are completely incompatible .

EDIT : See https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Matsushita_MKE

EDIT2: Also those drive are slow (2x with 300ms or so access time), cause high CPU usage when accessing DATA (software polling), are prone to mechanical issues (at least one fragile plastic cog inside tends to break) and often aren't that great with recordable media (sample variation between units means you may or may not be lucky on that point). So I would avoid using one unless you want a 1993-1994 lower end experience .

Thanks for the link, I just so happen to have an SB CT2230 with the Panasonic interface, I did in fact connect it to that interface but the drive keeps ejecting over and over. I may look into possible jumper settings ?

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-06-04, 23:24:

MKE 2X wasn't low end in 1994. It was mid-range. In 1993 ANY CD-ROM drive was considered a luxury.

Why do people keep plugging MKE drives into IDE interfaces? You'd think after 25 years of telling them not to, they'd stop.
I noticed a flood of posts here on VOGONS recently of people asking questions to which answers are readily available if you invest 5 minutes of your time.

They certainly were.They weren't cheap either. Folk are just altering history wrt computers and related hardware/software. It happens a lot on Vogons I'm afraid

If these vogon members were ia vcfed forum member and posted this stuff they'ed be laughed out of those forums in less than a month. 😉

As for plugging in a MKE connection into ide headers is just ignorance on the person doing it without doing decent research of the hardware in question...

metrox wrote on 2021-06-04, 23:26:

darry wrote on 2021-06-04, 23:04:

CR-562-B and CR-563-B are not IDE/ATAPI drives. Do not connect one to an IDE controller! Damage may occur . […]
Show full quote

metrox wrote on 2021-06-04, 23:00:

Recently came upon a "working" CR-562-B, well at least the power light turns on. But can't find any way to connect it to various IDE controllers, I even tried connecting it to a Sound Blaster 16 CT 2830.
Does anyone know anything about this drive?

CR-562-B and CR-563-B are not IDE/ATAPI drives. Do not connect one to an IDE controller! Damage may occur .

Those drives require a Panasonic/MKE proprietary interface . Both IDE and Panasonic/MKE interfaces have 40 pins but are completely incompatible .

EDIT : See https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Matsushita_MKE

EDIT2: Also those drive are slow (2x with 300ms or so access time), cause high CPU usage when accessing DATA (software polling), are prone to mechanical issues (at least one fragile plastic cog inside tends to break) and often aren't that great with recordable media (sample variation between units means you may or may not be lucky on that point). So I would avoid using one unless you want a 1993-1994 lower end experience .

Thanks for the link, I just so happen to have an SB CT2230 with the Panasonic interface, I did in fact connect it to that interface but the drive keeps ejecting over and over. I may look into possible jumper settings ?

If it keeps ejecting by itself then there is something physically wrong with the drive. Could be something as simple as the tray having skipped a tooth or it could be something else like the micro-switch that detects it is closed is not working / has broken off, etc.

What has often happened to the repeat ejectors is that they have been opened against resistance, i.e. hitting something or getting forced back in, and skipped a tooth, so that when they get pulled back in, they interpret the stop at the faceplate as resistance again because the servo thinks it hasn't come all the way back in, and it opens again because it thinks something jammed in it. Junky drives, you can try pulling it's tongue as it reaches full extension to make it skip the tooth forward again, drives you care about you should take apart and re-index, and clean the contacts or sensors on the stops etc.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-06-04, 23:24:

MKE 2X wasn't low end in 1994. It was mid-range. In 1993 ANY CD-ROM drive was considered a luxury.

Why do people keep plugging MKE drives into IDE interfaces? You'd think after 25 years of telling them not to, they'd stop.
I noticed a flood of posts here on VOGONS recently of people asking questions to which answers are readily available if you invest 5 minutes of your time.

I referred to the MKE based drives as "low end" based on my personal experience of them being the most affordable 2x option (MPC-2 compliant) where I lived when I got one in late 1994 . There were likely still 1x drives on the market at that point, not that I cared as, AFAICR, they were perceived by myself and my entourage as being thoroughly obsolete at that point . I guess one could argue that a 1x drive by then would have been be considered the actual low end of the CD-ROM market . That said, going back to 2X and faster drives, DMA capable proprietary drive/interface combos such as the Mitsumi CRMC-FX001D were a thing in 1994 as were SCSI units from the likes of NEC. From a performance perspective, there may well have been slower 2x drives than the CR-562B/CR-563B, but at least where I lived, I do not recall there being cheaper ones (MKE interface drives from a company/brand called NSA were also a thing, though I do not recall them being significantly cheaper).

As for MKE drives wrongfully being assumed to be ATAPI, I guess it's a symptom of "if the connector fits, it must be compatible fallacy syndrome" of which this https://i.stack.imgur.com/VYBcN.jpg is an extreme satire . That said, while I understand why MKE might have wanted to reuse readily available 40-pin cables and connectors for their proprietary interface, it was definitely a double-edged sword and bound to generate confusion, especially in the early days of ATAPI .

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-06-05, 01:09:

metrox wrote on 2021-06-04, 23:26:

darry wrote on 2021-06-04, 23:04:

CR-562-B and CR-563-B are not IDE/ATAPI drives. Do not connect one to an IDE controller! Damage may occur . […]
Show full quote

CR-562-B and CR-563-B are not IDE/ATAPI drives. Do not connect one to an IDE controller! Damage may occur .

Those drives require a Panasonic/MKE proprietary interface . Both IDE and Panasonic/MKE interfaces have 40 pins but are completely incompatible .

EDIT : See https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Matsushita_MKE

EDIT2: Also those drive are slow (2x with 300ms or so access time), cause high CPU usage when accessing DATA (software polling), are prone to mechanical issues (at least one fragile plastic cog inside tends to break) and often aren't that great with recordable media (sample variation between units means you may or may not be lucky on that point). So I would avoid using one unless you want a 1993-1994 lower end experience .

Thanks for the link, I just so happen to have an SB CT2230 with the Panasonic interface, I did in fact connect it to that interface but the drive keeps ejecting over and over. I may look into possible jumper settings ?

If it keeps ejecting by itself then there is something physically wrong with the drive. Could be something as simple as the tray having skipped a tooth or it could be something else like the micro-switch that detects it is closed is not working / has broken off, etc.

I seem to recall those drives having a habit of doing the auto eject on power-up thing if the drive cable is connected the wrong way (upside down) .

darry wrote on 2021-06-05, 03:29:

As for MKE drives wrongfully being assumed to be ATAPI, I guess it's a symptom of "if the connector fits, it must be compatible fallacy syndrome" of which this https://i.stack.imgur.com/VYBcN.jpg is an extreme satire . That said, while I understand why MKE might have wanted to reuse readily available 40-pin cables and connectors for their proprietary interface, it was definitely a double-edged sword and bound to generate confusion, especially in the early days of ATAPI .

I used to laugh at those fools buying the 40 pin thinking they'd got ATAPI compatibility, obviously they should have gone for the 34 pin.... so it was floppy compatible 😉

Though for real I swear there was a couple around that were IDE but not full ATAPI, such that they tended to argue with anything else on the same channel and only run with their own driver, not an atapi compliant one. They are probably immortalised in a slackware howto somewhere along with the sbpcd which seldom worked in slack for anyone at the time 'coz they had it as spbcd in some parts of the scripts.

I was anointed chief for life when I first spun up my quadspeed in the village, but then every six months they were doubling speed and price was halving every twelve.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-06-05, 04:02:

I used to laugh at those fools buying the 40 pin thinking they'd got ATAPI compatibility, obviously they should have gone for th […]
Show full quote

darry wrote on 2021-06-05, 03:29:

As for MKE drives wrongfully being assumed to be ATAPI, I guess it's a symptom of "if the connector fits, it must be compatible fallacy syndrome" of which this https://i.stack.imgur.com/VYBcN.jpg is an extreme satire . That said, while I understand why MKE might have wanted to reuse readily available 40-pin cables and connectors for their proprietary interface, it was definitely a double-edged sword and bound to generate confusion, especially in the early days of ATAPI .

I used to laugh at those fools buying the 40 pin thinking they'd got ATAPI compatibility, obviously they should have gone for the 34 pin.... so it was floppy compatible 😉

Though for real I swear there was a couple around that were IDE but not full ATAPI, such that they tended to argue with anything else on the same channel and only run with their own driver, not an atapi compliant one. They are probably immortalised in a slackware howto somewhere along with the sbpcd which seldom worked in slack for anyone at the time 'coz they had it as spbcd in some parts of the scripts.

I was anointed chief for life when I first spun up my quadspeed in the village, but then every six months they were doubling speed and price was halving every twelve.

At the very least, AFAICR, some early NEC IDE compatible CD-ROM drives worked off of an IDE physical interface but required a specific custom driver to work as they were not (at least not fully) ATAPI compatible . I may have a sample of one of those in my hoard .

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-05, 00:52:

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-06-04, 23:24:

MKE 2X wasn't low end in 1994. It was mid-range. In 1993 ANY CD-ROM drive was considered a luxury.

Why do people keep plugging MKE drives into IDE interfaces? You'd think after 25 years of telling them not to, they'd stop.
I noticed a flood of posts here on VOGONS recently of people asking questions to which answers are readily available if you invest 5 minutes of your time.

They certainly were.They weren't cheap either. Folk are just altering history wrt computers and related hardware/software. It happens a lot on Vogons I'm afraid

Those CR-562-B/CR-563-B drives definitely were the cheapest 2x or faster drives available in my part of the world in 1994. Teenage me shopped around extensively to find the cheapest reasonably fast drive to replace the Magnavox CDD-461 (sub 1x for data transfer) that I had at the time to be able to enjoy the MPC level 2 content that was becoming available . I even remember the name of the retailer I eventually got it from (Club Centra) and the fact that it was a CR-563-B in an IBM-branded OEM kit (probably meant for upgrading one of their ValuePoint models). The price for the drive was below 150 $CAN, which was very inexpensive compared to other options .

darry wrote on 2021-06-05, 04:31:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-05, 00:52:

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-06-04, 23:24:

MKE 2X wasn't low end in 1994. It was mid-range. In 1993 ANY CD-ROM drive was considered a luxury.

Why do people keep plugging MKE drives into IDE interfaces? You'd think after 25 years of telling them not to, they'd stop.
I noticed a flood of posts here on VOGONS recently of people asking questions to which answers are readily available if you invest 5 minutes of your time.

They certainly were.They weren't cheap either. Folk are just altering history wrt computers and related hardware/software. It happens a lot on Vogons I'm afraid

Those CR-562-B/CR-563-B drives definitely were the cheapest 2x or faster drives available in my part of the world in 1994. Teenage me shopped around extensively to find the cheapest reasonably fast drive to replace the Magnavox CDD-461 (sub 1x for data transfer) that I had at the time to be able to enjoy the MPC level 2 content that was becoming available . I even remember the name of the retailer I eventually got it from (Club Centra) and the fact that it was a CR-563-B in an IBM-branded OEM kit (probably meant for upgrading one of their ValuePoint models). The price for the drive was below 150 $CAN, which was very inexpensive compared to other options .

I expect it depends on when in '94. Bought a 486 from Kamco around May '93 and looking back at the brochure they didn't offer a CD drive even as an option. I added a 562b for £110 from Magic Media in Sept '94. Up until then the only CD drives I remember using were an unreliable external caddy loading single speed probably around late '91 and a stack of 4 external networked drives in late '92. Got a Dell in summer '96 and that came with an 8x drive (Sony CDU311?). It looks like the ATAPI standard was released around Feb '94 (SFF 8020 R1.2), which I assume led to the fairly rapid decline of the other proprietary interfaces.

So I can imagine that the 562b was a decent mid-range drive at the end of '93/start of '94, and heading toward low-end by the end of '94. Pretty sure I wouldn't have been buying a mid-range drive at the time.

metrox wrote on 2021-06-04, 23:26:

Thanks for the link, I just so happen to have an SB CT2230 with the Panasonic interface, I did in fact connect it to that interface but the drive keeps ejecting over and over. I may look into possible jumper settings ?

Does the drive behave if you don't connect the data cable? If you just attach power then it should open if you push the eject button, and close if you push the tray or press the eject button. That would test if the switches are working.

OK thanks for the input guys, I got it to work finally.
After many hours it turns out I had the wrong driver, and to make it more complicated this drive will not read "modern CDR's" which was perplexing to say the least because that's all I had lying around... but when I put in an original DOS CD-ROM game, voila it reads it.

Older CDROM drives usually only like disks written in DAO mode, disk at once, not multisession. Then also they like particular dye colors and not others. Best compatibility is meant to be with gold colored CD-RWs written DAO.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-06-05, 04:02:

[...]

I used to laugh at those fools buying the 40 pin thinking they'd got ATAPI compatibility, obviously they should have gone for the 34 pin.... so it was floppy compatible 😉

:')

Still, if you actually have a 1993/1994 system with a period-correct sound card, odds are you'll have the interface anyway, both of them - and maybe one or two more to boot.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-06-05, 20:45:

Older CDROM drives usually only like disks written in DAO mode, disk at once, not multisession. Then also they like particular dye colors and not others. Best compatibility is meant to be with gold colored CD-RWs written DAO.

And with something both not likely designed with CD-R in mind and this old, adjustment of laser gain might be necessary if CD-R is to be readable at all (probably not good for laser longevity).

I once briefly setup and tested a makeshift CD tower running Linux (probably Slackware) and using 2x 40-pin cables (EDIT : with 4 drive connectors each), 2 MKE controllers and something like 6 or maybe even 8 CR-562-B and CR-563-B (I actually had more to be used as spares) drives (people were basically giving those drives away by then) . AFAICR, the ability to read a given CD-R disk varied greatly between drives with at least one working just fine and at least one not at all with most recognizing the CD-R but being marginal at reading it . I personally never went so far as to play with gain, simply gave up on the project and junked the drives .